PV Gap

Lewis Said:

How many arc seconds should the ISS appear when it is 400 miles overhead? Compared to diameter of the moon?

We Answered:

The ISS main truss is almost 300 feet long. That's 0.0568 miles (about 1/20th of a mile). The tangent of the angle is 0.0568 / 400, or 1.4205e-4.

To convert to angle, use the arctangent function, and get 0.00814 degrees. That's equivalent to 0.4883 minutes, or 29.299 seconds.

Typical eyepiece (Plossl) has about a 50 degree apparent field of view, and if it yields 45 magnifications, that is about 1.1 degrees true field of view. The moon's diameter (about 30 minutes) would about half fill the view. The ISS would appear to be 0.4883 x 45 = 21.97 minutes wide in the eyepiece, or about 2/3 the size of the moon TO THE NAKED EYE. Actually, that's pretty big, so maybe yes, depending on your imagination.

Erika Said:

How many solar panels easy math question?

We Answered:

The question asks how many modules in EACH panel first:

So there are 6x6 modules, or 6^2 modules. There are 36 per panel.

There are 2 panels so 72 modules in total.